Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry: Birkbeck Launch Event 2009 - Selected Papers

'the Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry ... made me ridiculously happy'

'Maybe my favourite kind of writing ... is the dense, allusive, difficult and knotty poetry of the ignored gang of British avant-garde writers like Bill Griffiths, Denise Riley, Maggie O'Sullivan and too many more to mention. On the train I read the first issue of a new magazine, the Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry, and it made me ridiculously happy ... ', writes Ian McMillan on the Radio 3 blog. Not quite as earthy as Peter Philpott's response to be found here, but both are complimentary in their own way. The attention is much appreciated, and comes prior to a series of launch events:

Edge Hill University
Education Building (E21)
St Helens Road
Ormskirk L39 4QP
8 October, 6.30 pm (see here)
(http://www.edgehill.ac.uk/location/ormskirk)

Birkbeck
University of London
Main Building (Room B29)
Malet Street WC1E 7HX
21 October, 7.30 pm (see here)
Featuring Caroline Bergvall, Andrea Brady, Robert Hampson, Robert Sheppard and Scott Thurston
(http://www.bbk.ac.uk/maps)

University of Salford
Crescent House
Room 103
Salford M5 4WT
9 December, 4 pm
Featuring Christine Kennedy,
Allen Fisher and Ian Davidson
(http://www.salford.ac.uk/travel)

All are welcome. Help to promote these events by printing a poster or emailing it to friends and colleagues (see here).

Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry, Vol. 1, No. 1, Sept. 2009 (Contents, Abstracts, Keywords, Article Opening Pages and Order Form)

View at Scribd.com
For more information visit Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry (http://www.gylphi.co.uk/poetry)

Poetry in Bloom

Little did we understand, when first approached by Robert Sheppard and Scott Thurston, that taking on the Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry would lead to a discovery of so many new voices on the Internet. The first eye opener was when the American poet, Ron Silliman, posted a link to the journal on his blog (http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com). After this link was posted we experienced a whole stream of visitors originating from Silliman's blog page. Second was a much longer posting on Ken Edwards' publishing project blog, Reality Street (http://www.realitystreet.co.uk/kens-blog.php) entitled 'Is it Academic?'. At around the same time Gylphi began to 'tweet' on Twitter, and it soon became apparent that Web 2.0 technologies were a way to reach an audience in a new way, a way that enabled people to take a casual interest in Gylphi without committing to a mailing list or checking an RSS feed or blog. It also became apparent that these technologies were being widely used by the contemporary British, Irish and American poetry communities. So, with our Twitter 'followers' reaching into the hundreds, we decided that it was time to take a look at Facebook as well; and we are pleased that we did. On Facebook we have had the privilege of discovering yet more poetry communities, and learning about, among other things, the Irish SoundEye Festival (http://ow.ly/e6Zz). Clearly, there is an active, and interconnected, poetry community on the web. One which we are only just beginning to understand. In the hope of helping others understand and connect with this community, here are just a few of the links we have found: http://fulcrumpoetry.com http://www.saltpublishing.com http://www.defaultpublishing.com http://www.poetrylibrary.org.uk http://jacketmagazine.com http://otherroom.org http://www.pores.bbk.ac.uk http://www.modernpoetry.org.uk http://www.greatworks.org.uk http://robertsheppard.blogspot.com http://dbqp.blogspot.com http://atonalistdoc.blogspot.com http://stephenvincent.net http://www.shearsman.com http://stevenfama.blogspot.com http://acompulsivereader.wordpress.com http://michellenakapierce.blogspot.com http://lilliputreview.blogspot.com http://dodie-bellamy.blogspot.com http://www.mynewpoem.com http://toddswift.blogspot.com http://www.petermanson.com http://www.woodlandpattern.org http://openned.com

Please feel free to add further links and comments.

Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry

Individual and institutional subscriptions are now open for the Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry. Tell your library in advance so that they can subscribe in time for the September 2009 issue. As an introductory offer we are offering the first three issues at the price of an annual subscription until December 2009. Subscribe now.